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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24198772">Remnants</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya'>Arazsya</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Stabbing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 01:41:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,233</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24198772</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim and Martin follow up on a statement.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood/Tim Stoker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>63</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Remnants</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/gifts">smaragdbird</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tim doesn’t work from his own desk anymore. It’s not that it’s not a good one – he’d been sure to pick out the best available when he’d arrived: no wobbling legs or stuck drawers, and a placement that lets him see everywhere he needs to. Before, that had meant that he and Martin and Sasha were close enough to ping rubber bands at each other, and that he had a good enough view of Jon’s office that he’d be able to stop any stationary-based warfare the second that their boss might see it.</p>
<p>Now, it means that when Tim sits in his own space and tries to look down at his own work, all he can think about is the emptiness in his peripheral vision. Sasha’s desk, blank screens and no half-forgotten coffee mugs. Jon’s door, a few last stubborn bits of blue and white crime scene tape still stuck to it. His eyes had always kept finding their way back to them.</p>
<p>After a few days, he’d had enough. Picked up his chair, plonked it down at Martin’s desk. Threw a few bitter conspiracy theories his way, let him believe that it was for confidential discussion purposes, and then just never moved it back.</p>
<p>It’s better, he thinks. He doesn’t want to be there, either, not <em>really</em>. It’s still in the Institute. But at least he can’t see where Sasha isn’t, and the hissing static urgency that’s been sitting at the back of his skull since those fucking corridors, telling him over and over again that he cannot lose sight of Martin, that if he does he’ll never find him again, goes a little quieter.</p>
<p>Martin won’t be convinced to leave, of course. He just keeps beavering away, alternating between insisting on Jon’s innocence and struggling to make up for the shortfall that comes from half their team being gone. On the few occasions that Tim had been able to make himself go out alone, tried to find a nightclub or a bar and bury himself in music and alcohol until he can’t think, there’d been a corner of his brain that had remained so stubbornly sober that there had been no point in it.</p>
<p>If Martin notices that Tim’s taken to following him around, he doesn’t say anything. Just seems to adapt it into his life, gives him stuff to hold when he’s closing filing cabinets and talks to him about idle, gentle things. Sometimes, he’ll snap. About how Jon absolutely could <em>not</em> have murdered anyone, about how he and Sasha have to come back safe, about how Tim could just help him out with the research for one minute. But it’s never about the proximity, and Tim’s grateful. He doesn’t think he could stand to have it questioned.</p>
<p>He wonders enough himself about whether it can really be anything so simple as their kaleidoscopic shared trauma, as his own need not to lose anyone else. Especially when he’s so wrapped up in watching Martin chew absentmindedly on a pencil that he doesn’t notice Martin’s pushed something over to him until he stops, and says Tim’s name a little more loudly.</p>
<p>“Right,” Tim says, breaking himself out of it. “Yeah.” It’s a statement. He knows the format well enough. Sees it in his dreams, where they Institute’s forms are filled out in his own handwriting, Sasha’s, Danny’s, Martin’s. “What’s this one, then? Spooky Tree 4, Saplings of Doom?”</p>
<p>He wants to rip it up. Instead, he pokes at it, enough to show willing. He doesn’t want to find out that it won’t tear.</p>
<p>“Broken freezer,” Martin says.</p>
<p>“Did it eat a repair guy?”</p>
<p>“Apparently it talked.” Martin shrugs, but it’s overly nonchalant. Tim knows the statements bother him. “Told her to stock up.”</p>
<p>“And we’re sure it’s not just one of those fridges that know when you’re out of milk?” Tim pushes back in his chair, distancing himself from the paper. “Been a while since we’ve had a look through the discredited section.”</p>
<p>Martin blinks, as if he’d forgotten that the discredited section existed. Maybe he just doesn’t feel lucky enough to believe in it anymore.</p>
<p>“Could you do the follow-up call?” he asks. “You know  you’re better at it than I am.”</p>
<p>Tim recognises the effort to involve him for what it is, but he leans over to grab Martin’s office phone anyway. Brings it to his ear, and realises as he does so that it brings his face within inches of Martin’s. Instead of settling back, he finds himself leaning his elbows down to better hold his weight.</p>
<p>Martin dials the number for him, focussed on the keypad, and Tim watches. Martin’s head is slightly inclined, lines on his features that hadn’t been there when they’d first met, but there’s nothing wild there now. Not like there had been in the corridors, when that strange echoing laughter had seemed to reverberate in every direction.</p>
<p>Compared to that, he almost looks peaceful.</p>
<p>A long single tone cuts into Tim’s consideration, and he pulls the phone away with a sigh, setting it back into its cradle.</p>
<p>“Number not available,” he reports. “Always a great sign.”</p>
<p>Martin grimaces, and shuffles through the file again, frowning down at some of the other information. Then he gets up, groping with one hand for his coat.</p>
<p>“What are you doing?” Tim demands, rising from his own chair, the idea of blocking Martin in flashing for an instant in his head. Getting in his way, making him stay where it’s safer. It wouldn’t work. Never has.</p>
<p>“I’m going to go and do the follow-up,” Martin says, voice sharpening. Tim wants to step in closer, try to push him back with the force of his own bitter anger, keep pushing until the distance snaps.</p>
<p>“Last time you went to investigate,” Tim reminds him, without moving. “You got trapped by worms for a month, and I got eaten.”</p>
<p>“I’ve been out for things since that!” Martin takes a second, controls his breathing, but when he speaks again it’s no less angry for it, crackles like hot fat in a pan. “It’s our job, Tim. One of us still needs to do it. So when Jon and Sasha get back it’s not all a complete mess.”</p>
<p><em>They’re not coming back</em>, Tim thinks, and he knows it’s shown on his face enough for Martin to hear – he flinches like he’s been struck, and there’s nothing for Tim to do to cover that stab of guilt but turn around and snatch up his own jacket.</p>
<p>“Tim?”</p>
<p>“I’m coming with you,” he growls. Not even remorse. It had been a foregone conclusion from the second that Martin had stood up. “Someone has to be able to give a witness report, right?”</p>
<p>“<em>Tim</em>.”</p>
<p>Tim glowers, fights with his armholes for a minute in a way that Sasha would have mocked him for. Sasha’s gone.</p>
<p>“Let’s just go,” he says, the words flat and heavy and refusing to betray the thrumming sensation in his head. “Before I change my mind.”</p><hr/>
<p>The distance to Walthamstow Central seems shorter than Tim remembers, right up until they hit King’s Cross. The doors slide open, half the people in their carriage grab their luggage and step off, and for a wild second, Tim wants to go with them. He almost feels himself jump to his feet, grab Martin’s hand, and drag him with him.</p>
<p>They’ll catch something, going anywhere. Keep travelling, leave the Institute and London and the parts of themselves that’ll never not be afraid in their wake. They’ll get a dog and learn to grow roses and never go back, and none of it will ever find them again.</p>
<p>Tim stays in his seat, and the doors slide closed like a guillotine. He can feel the screaming of the Victoria Line in his bones long after they’ve left the underground behind.</p>
<p>He says nothing to Martin. Wants to, the words bubbling behind his lips, burning to get out, but he can’t let them. When he imagines how Martin might look at him, Martin shaking his head and telling him to leave if he wants but he won’t, Martin choosing to stay out of some desperate loyal hope that Jon’s innocent and alive and will come back – it’s more than enough to silence him.</p>
<p>In all of Tim’s dreams, when Jon comes back he’s bloody and gimlet-eyed and dangerous. Martin goes to him anyway, and Tim loses the one thing he has left.</p>
<p>The area that Martin tries to lead them through is nice enough – the evening sun pours gold onto it like an overenthusiastic child artist, terraced houses set back behind thin strips of yard that some of the residents have made some effort to convert into tiny gardens. A tabby cat meows at them from a bin, then jumps down to wind its way around Martin legs when he stops to smile at it. Its tail ghosts past Tim’s ankle, soft and intentioned, and he nearly cracks his head into Martin’s when he leans down to offer it his hand.</p>
<p>“Sorry,” Martin says, stepping back and immediately burying his face in his maps app again. The cat stops with one paw raised as if affronted, then loops back around into purring.</p>
<p>It tires of their attentions within a few minutes, and Martin watches it go, face properly relaxed for the first time in a while. Then he shakes his head, taps at his phone to try and fix the rotation, and sets off again. Tim quietly adds a cat to the fantasy life that they might have, if he can just find the words to convince Martin to get off at King’s Cross on the way back, and follows.</p>
<p>The house, when they find it, is nothing unremarkable. Tim has seen a lot of sinister buildings, ones that seemed to have threat oozing from every brick, spaces left in the windows specifically for figures that would only be there the first time he looked, mysterious stains forming strange patterns in the pebble-dash. This one is identical to its neighbours on either side: it’s painted a faded white, with the standard issue configuration of windows and door, and there has been an attempt to construct a narrow lawn. The grass is longer than around the other houses, but it’s nothing approaching machete levels. Just a few more dandelions than Tim’s father would ever have allowed.</p>
<p>Martin pauses for a moment on the street, then fiddles the gate open and goes to the door. He knocks, and then lets Tim pull him back a metre by his bag, on the off-chance that it’s answered by a nice suburban axe-wielding monster.</p>
<p>The man who opens it is thankfully devoid of any obvious heavy weaponry. He’s middle-aged, dressed like he’s just come in from work – still in rumpled trousers and a polo shirt, the logo of a delivery company stitched over the pocket – and with the kind of expression that suggests it was a long day. His eyes narrow even further at the sight of them, like he thinks they’re there to ask for money.</p>
<p>“Can I help you?” he demands.</p>
<p>“Hi,” Martin says. “We were, um, actually hoping to take a look around?”</p>
<p>“We’re from the Magnus Institute,” Tim adds, stepping to Martin’s side and pretending he’s utterly unaware of the quick stare that Martin shoots him. Doesn’t usually like to admit that. Tough.</p>
<p>“What’s that?” the man asks, barely moving from where he’s set himself, a monolith in the doorway.</p>
<p>“It’s an academic institution founded to investigate the esoteric,” Martin reels off, so quickly that Tim can tell it’s an effort to not let any single word of it linger long enough to be taken in properly. “We have some records from a Mrs Davison – is she still a resident here?”</p>
<p>“No.” Something in the man’s expression shifts, slightly – Tim imagines the sound of stone grinding to allow it. A softening, perhaps, from recognition. “She used to live here before me.”</p>
<p>“And what’s your name?” Tim prompts.</p>
<p>“Boyd,” he announces, flat and steady.</p>
<p>“Right, Mr Boyd.” Tim pastes a friendly, professional smile onto his face as best he can. “Could we come in? You might be able to help us with our inquiries. Mrs Davison was having issues with some of her furniture – do you still have any of it?”</p>
<p>Boyd eyes them, still a little dubious, but shuffles aside far enough for them to get in.</p>
<p>“Still got most of it,” he says. “She left it all here when she moved on.”</p>
<p>“Great.” Martin heads inside, squeezing past Boyd, and Tim follows like he’s on strings, barely manages to pause on the threshold. Inside looks clean, normal. There’s a cobweb wreathing the ceiling, but that’s hardly unusual, and it’s not as if Boyd is reminiscent of any spider that Tim’s ever met. No delicacy or difficult angles to him.</p>
<p>Tim scaffolds his smile when it threatens to fold in on itself, and steps inside.</p><hr/>
<p>Martin isn’t sure exactly what he’d been expecting. Mrs Davison’s statement had conjured the image of a house filled with whispering, traitorous voices from everything that hummed with electricity, insisting that it wouldn’t be long until winter, and that if she wanted to survive she would have to start stocking up.</p>
<p>Boyd’s home is lived-in but still well-kept, a little anachronistic in places, but Martin’s seen worse. He leaves Tim distracting Boyd in the lounge with the radio, a small battery-powered thing that looks like it’s been transplanted from a teenager’s bedroom, and slips away to check the kitchen.</p>
<p>The state of things is a bit worse, in there. There’s a box under the lopsided kitchen table, one side depicting a freezer, but it still seems to be sealed. There’s a piece of paper taped to the top marked with the same logo as Boyd’s shirt, and Martin wonders off-hand if he’d stolen it to replace the one that’s sitting on the other side of the room, its weight leaving dents in the linoleum.</p>
<p>It should slot into place under the fridge, but instead there’s a cobwebbed, dusty void there, wires at the back that look like they’ve been torn out. Martin eyes them briefly, and decides not to reach for them. Mrs Davison had likely done some damage there before she’d moved out – most of the activity in her statement had been centred around the freezer – and Boyd is probably waiting for that to be fixed before he can have the new one installed.</p>
<p>The fridge, when he tries it, is completely empty. No light comes on when he opens it, no curdled milk or rotting meat. The water from the tap comes out clean, though the pipes give a violent, angry rattle, and he’s faster turning them off again than he needs to be.</p>
<p>The hob is a little stained, grease and bits of food, but Martin has seen far worse. It’s a gas range, the oven door cloudy from use but no more than Martin’s is at home.</p>
<p>The station switches on the radio, cutting in in the middle of a tinny rendition of a song, and Martin heads back in to join them. He meets Tim’s eyes, briefly, but Tim looks away, focussing on the dials again. He’s being weird, has been weird ever since they got out of the corridors. Martin has no idea what to do but let him, but he still feels in the periphery of every broken glance, a faint promise that he won’t come back either.</p>
<p>“Sorry,” Martin says. “Could we get a cup of tea, please?”</p>
<p>Boyd’s mouth twitches, but he goes, glancing between Tim and Martin as he does so like he’s still not entirely convinced of their story.</p>
<p>“Could I get milk with that?” Martin tries.</p>
<p>“Don’t have milk,” Boyd announces, as he moves past him into the kitchen. “It goes off.”</p>
<p>Martin waits until he can hear the sound of a kettle being set on the hob, the crackling of the gas being turned on, before he moves the rest of the way to Tim, and stops close beside him.</p>
<p>“Nothing in the fridge,” Martin reports, voice low. “Like, at all. I don’t think it’s even plugged in. There’s a new freezer but it’s still in its box, and the old one’s been ripped out but not thrown out.”</p>
<p>Tim inclines his head further towards the radio, like a man in prayer.</p>
<p>“Weird,” he says, but it’s bleak and unsurprised. “Might just not like technology. You think he might have been experiencing the same stuff as Mrs Davison?”</p>
<p>Martin shrugs. It feels too tight across his shoulders.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” he says. “It all seems normal to me but that never means anything. I guess I’ll check upstairs – can you ask if he has any idea how we might get in contact with Mrs Davison?”</p>
<p>“Right.” Tim finally sits back from the radio, looks up, and for a moment it’s like he’s just heard everything that Martin hasn’t said to him since they’d found Jon missing. His gaze is heavy, intense. Martin pushes a smile, and starts to back away.</p>
<p>“Where’s your bathroom?” he calls through to Boyd, almost stumbling as one of his feet catches the carpet wrong.</p>
<p>“Top of the stairs,” Boyd answers, voice raised but still not quite angry. Martin directs a half-hearted wave in Tim’s direction, and then flees back into the hall.</p>
<p>The steps up are narrow, carpeted in the middle but left as bare, white-painted wood at either side. Martin heads up carefully, trying to keep from slipping, and notices the bathroom at the end of the landing – the door’s been left open, and he can see a plum-coloured sink in the space beyond.</p>
<p>There’s a bedroom to the left, an old bookcase and a chair with a quilt folded onto it visible through the doorway, and what looks like a spare on the other side. Martin pokes his head around, but it’s mostly bare save for a few old teddy bears tucked up on a shelf, and an unplugged lamp.</p>
<p>He shakes his head, and ducks out again. There’s a tear in the wallpaper, he notices, moving along towards the bathroom. Not deep, just like something had caught on a ragged edge and then kept going, at about head height. It stops, about half a metre away from the door.</p>
<p>Martin follows it, reaches a hand up towards it as he passes, but it’s too high for the gesture to feel natural. He drops his arm, steps into the bathroom, and recoils out again.</p>
<p>A second glance inside shows him exactly what the first had done, only in more detail. The room is clean, a perfectly normal if old-fashioned combination of tile and linoleum, aside from a small patch of mould beginning to gather in the corner nearest the window, and the corpse in the bath. It’s not fresh, the skin withered and tending towards mummified, hair hanging in lax tangles and mouth wide. It’s still wearing the remains of a dress, though Martin couldn’t guess at what colour it was originally.</p>
<p>Martin thinks, numbly, of Boyd, wearing the uniform of the delivery company who had brought the new freezer, of Mrs Davison who had wanted one, of the weeks of whispering she’d described telling her that she needed more to eat. He thinks of being sent up to where Boyd must have known that he’d find her. He thinks of Tim, and then he stops, and bolts.</p>
<p>From somewhere downstairs, the kettle starts to scream.</p><hr/>
<p>None of Boyd’s décor seems to be quite right. Tim studies the mantelpiece, because it’s better if he at least tries to focus on something other than how quickly Martin had left the room the second that Tim had met his eyes. It doesn’t look like a display belonging to a middle-aged man, living alone. Not that he wants to judge, exactly, but china Pekingese dogs and carriage clocks are things that he’d have sooner associated with a grandmother. The photos, too – there are three of them, the first showing two women, one older, with her arm around the younger one. Then there’s a slightly out-of-focus shot of a baby, and another of a man in graduation robes.</p>
<p>None of them have any resemblance at all to Boyd.</p>
<p>“Is this your family?” Tim asks, hearing the sound of footsteps from behind him. He indicates the photos, and struggles to keep any trace of doubt out of his tone. It’s possible, after all, that they all just took very firmly after someone else.</p>
<p>There’s no reply. Maybe it’s a sore point, some kind of messy divorce or other. Fine. Tim’s there to find out about the spooky, not about the people who will inevitably be torn apart by it.</p>
<p>“I don’t suppose you have any contact details for–”</p>
<p>“Tim!”</p>
<p>There’s a crash as the door is flung so hard back on its hinges that it smashes into the wall. Tim wheels around just in time to see Martin tackle Boyd, and the two of them go down. There’s a painful crack as Martin takes an elbow to the cheek, knocking him sideways. Boyd grabs at him, hauls him back in close with a fistful of jumper.</p>
<p>Tim has a brief impression of a raised fist, and lunges for the closest thing to hand – the radio. It feels too slow – somewhere else, he hears Martin give a choking gasp like he’s taken a hit to the chest. The grip of the stereo is slippery in his hand, but he wrenches it up, swings it around. The movement is glacial. He can see the arc of it, the point where it will impact with Boyd’s head, but the aching moments it takes to get there stretch as if he’s watching continents form.</p>
<p>It connects, and Boyd drops away with a dull thud.</p>
<p>Tim throws the radio off to the side, and can’t even hear its impact. He grabs for Boyd, and starts to drag him up and away from Martin. The man’s a dead weight, unresisting, but Tim can’t risk him waking up and attacking again – he hoists him into the kitchen, then slams the door and props the nearest chair under it.</p>
<p>“What was <em>that</em>?” he demands, between ragged breaths, as he turns back.</p>
<p>Martin is lying where he’d been left, squinting up at Tim as if he’s having a bright light shone in his face. He’s gone pale, jaw set, and beside him on the carpet, where it must have fallen from Boyd’s grip, is a chef’s knife. The blade gleams in the artificial light, red drawn across it in vague, abstract patterns.</p>
<p>“Mrs Davison’s in the bathroom,” Martin announces, and his voice already has a hazy quality to it. “She’s dead.” He lifts a hand briefly away from his side, as if to point, but blood drips from his fingers, and he just frowns at it.</p>
<p>Tim curses, grabs a cushion from the sofa, and drops to his knees by Martin’s side. He fusses at Martin’s shirt, trying to get a better look at the wound, and then presses the fabric hard against it, trying to get some pressure into place. A stain starts to spread out across the cheerful scottie dog pattern.</p>
<p>“Martin,” Tim says, but there’s too much shake in it even over just two syllables. He bites at his lip, and tries to prop Martin’s hand in place over the cushion. “I’m going to be right back, okay? I just have to call for help.”</p>
<p>When he phones the ambulance, the police, he leaves smears across his screen. His mind is caught, for what feels like five minutes but is probably closer to ten seconds, whether he should tell them to send someone who’s already signed a Section 31, before he decides that it’s not his problem. It might just be a garden variety murder that had coincidentally happened to someone who had given a statement at the Magnus Institute. And even if it isn’t, he hardly cares enough for Her Majesty’s Constabulary to bother trying to save them any paperwork.</p>
<p>He goes back to Martin – he’s started to shake, his grip on the cushion juddering with it. Tim shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over him, rests his hand against Martin’s cheek in the hope that some warmth will leech out of it.</p>
<p>“Help’s coming,” he says. It sounds flat and useless, even to him.</p>
<p>“Could…” Martin hesitates, drags his eyes away from somewhere beyond Tim’s shoulder, and tries to look him in the face. “Could you tell Jon–”</p>
<p>“No,” Tim snaps, putting his own pressure on the cushion with his free hand. “You’ll tell him yourself. Or don’t. But you are <em>not</em> leaving me to do all that work at the Institute by myself. I know it’s a lot, but that is hardly fair.”</p>
<p>He remembers, somewhere in the back of his mind where memories he doesn’t want flutter like moths around a lit window, the last time that they had been here. One of a thousand little tears in sanity they’d found in those weeks in the corridors, struggling to keep Martin from bleeding out only to find that seconds later there was no wound, while the aching strains of Michael’s laughter just grew louder and louder and Martin looked up at him with nothing in his eyes but leaving. They’d seen their reflections dead, had run and run and never been able to trust anything but the place where their hands met.</p>
<p>There’ll be no mind games here, Tim thinks. This is it. Martin.</p>
<p>“Martin,” he says. “Come on. The police are going to want to talk to you, and – and Sasha and Jon are going to want to hear all about it when they get back.” It’s sour, the lie, the parts he doesn’t believe, but he can’t stop it from bubbling up on his tongue, can feel the thin stretch in his throat that tells him that he’d say anything, do anything.</p>
<p>He rubs his thumb against Martin’s cheek, trying to convince him to focus again. There’s a faint, fractional shift as Martin turns into his touch as much as he can. And then his eyes slide shut, and there’s a soft sigh of breath as he exhales.</p>
<p>“Martin!” Tim pushes harder against the pillow, half desperation and half a vague hope that more pain might startle him back to consciousness. “Martin, please, you can’t leave me too.” He strains his ears, trying to pick up the distant sound of sirens, but he can hardly hear even the pounding that’s started up on the kitchen door around his own heartbeat, his own breathing. “Martin, you are <em>not</em> – I didn’t go down into those fucking tunnels with you for this. I know you don’t care why, you’re so obsessed with <em>him</em> that you can’t even see I’m in love with you, and it’s such a fucking joke, because I could do so much better, you know?”</p>
<p>Martin doesn’t move, and Tim lets out something somewhere between a snarl and a sob.</p>
<p>“I couldn’t,” he mumbles. Leans down, and kisses Martin’s forehead, murmurs against his skin. “I couldn’t.”</p>
<p>There’s no reply. Tim stays where he is, until the world is swamped by blue light.</p><hr/>
<p>It’s been years since Tim has read a gossip magazine. The hospital doesn’t seem to have anything else, though, so he makes do. He can’t remember the names of any of the celebrities – he isn’t even sure they <em>are</em> celebrities – and the details of their lives hit hollow. He finds himself starting to look for any trace of supernatural activity within the pages, wants to annotate it the way that Jon does his files sometimes, label things with <em>spiders???</em> or <em>Leitner again</em> or <em>why did no one tell me this?</em></p>
<p>More of it, he thinks, is explicable through the lens of possible spookiness than with actual mundane reality.</p>
<p>“Tim?”</p>
<p>Tim drops the magazine. It hits the hospital floor with a wretched glossy thud, which he ignores, and leans forward in his chair instead, studying Martin’s face. Better now, he thinks, despite the bruise that’s bloomed along his cheek, colours deep. He’s awake, a little out of it, but still here.</p>
<p>“Martin!” he says, and he can feel the broadest smile he’s felt in months unfurling over his face.</p>
<p>“What happened?”</p>
<p>“We’re never doing follow-up outside again,” Tim informs him, forces his tone light. “That was terrible. I don’t know why they hired us.”</p>
<p>“Hm.” Martin lays his head back on the pillow, stares up towards the dull speckling of the ceiling tiles. “Seemed all right from where I was sitting.”</p>
<p>“First of all–” Tim holds up a finger, jabs it towards Martin – “You got stabbed. You were not sitting. You were lying. Second, you got <em>stabbed</em>. It was not all right, at all, anywhere.”</p>
<p>Martin smiles, risks a look in Tim’s direction.</p>
<p>“I mean,” he says. “The bit where you said you loved me.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” Tim swallows, drops his eyes to the discarded magazine. He considers, briefly, picking it up again. Maybe if he read Martin some of the finer details of the apparent celebrities’ sex lives it would feel less like he’s been stabbed himself. “You were supposed to be unconscious for that bit.”</p>
<p>“Sorry. I mostly was, but I did hear some stuff.” Martin reaches out as if to pat at his arm, but comes up at least ten centimetres too short. “I… quite liked it? Thought it was nice.”</p>
<p>“Nice,” Tim echoes, emptily. God. Had Martin even <em>believed</em> him? Or did he just think that Tim was taking pity on the potentially dying man? Surely, <em>surely</em>, he’d know that if Tim had been lying he would have been far more charming about it.</p>
<p>“I’d like it better,” Martin says, slow and considered. “If you’d kiss me again.”</p>
<p>Tim sneaks a narrow-eyed glance at him. There’s nothing about his face to suggest that he’s teasing, just a quiet, hopeful something that Tim wants to recognise as happiness.</p>
<p>“What pain meds have they put you on?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know!” Martin throws an arm wide, expansive, presumably to indicate everything he might have been dosed with. “Christ, Tim, I didn’t think it’d be that difficult after you did your whole deathbed confession thing.”</p>
<p>“Maybe if <em>you</em> had deathbed confessed back I would feel a little more sure about my position–”</p>
<p>“I was <em>dying!</em>”</p>
<p>Tim sighs, shifts in his chair as if it’s really that important that he finds a more comfortable way of being in it, right this second.</p>
<p>“Tell you what,” he says. “If you still want me to kiss you tomorrow, I’ll do it.”</p>
<p>Martin narrows his eyes, and for a moment there’s nothing there but effort, as he starts trying to push himself up with one arm, only for it to subside before he can make it more than half an inch.</p>
<p>“Fine,” he says. “Tomorrow.” He breathes for a moment, as if he’s about to go back to sleep, but then he tips his face towards Tim again, looks at him like there’s nothing else in the world.</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“Thanks,” Martin says, more quietly. “For coming with me.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” Tim lays a hand over Martin’s, lets Martin take hold of it, his grip gentle but firm, not something Tim will ever be able to break. “You know I always will.”</p>
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